


Love and Racing

by YinNocturne



Category: Initial D
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Street Racing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 09:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18588379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YinNocturne/pseuds/YinNocturne
Summary: Sato Mako doesn't love Takahashi Ryousuke.





	Love and Racing

**Author's Note:**

> A kind of origin story and a remixing of the Initial D's persistent hetero/amatonormativity.

Mako was in a bad place when her senpai dragged her out to see a local race. The squealing of tires, roar of the engines, gasping release of the breaks. It lights something inside her. They go out for a little while, he takes her to races on Mt Usui and all the other passes within an hours drive. A year later, she’s got her own car, Sayuki riding shotgun, and they’re testing what they can do on Mt. Usui’s harsh consecutive corners.

It’s late, she dropped Sayuki off hours ago, Mako should have gone back to sleep, but something kept her up. So, quietly as she could, she snuck out to the Sileighty, and drove up to the top of Mt Usui. The air is different up here, and in the coldest, darkest part of the night, just before the sun rises again, the whole world changes. Mako’s skin tingles, her clutch foot itching, her right taps the heel-toe rhythm for the perfect four-wheel braking drift around C-121. It’s electric.

She revs the engine, shifts into first and moves out, she’s not going to hold back tonight, doesn’t think she could, not with the night air infecting her with a kind of heady, reckless glee. She takes the corners at a speed even Sayuki would blink at, barrels in without thought for the best or worst line. Comes up against guardrails and cliff-faces with bare millimetres to spare.

Then, she hears the whine of another engine coming up the mountain. She almost at the turn point, the ‘bottom’ of the racing line. It’s a white FC, with flip-up fog lamps and a rear wing, quite a pretty car, and it’s lights flash as she turns a perfect spin to end up right behind it ready to climb up again. It’s got to be a racer, no one’s out this late, or early really, on Mt. Usui. They climb together, and run the downhill twice. And then, they end up talking at the top of the pass until well after the sun rises.

Sato Mako doesn’t love Takahashi Ryousuke, not the way his screaming fangirls do, not in the romantic sense of the word. But Mako knows she owes him her life as a racer and she loves him for that.

 


End file.
